An artist friend of mine was hired to make a bunch of big lollipops and teddy bears, and other cutesy kid stuff like that, for a bar mitzvah that has a budget of $10 million. I’ve never been to a bar mitzvah, but this seemed a bit extravagant to me, especially once I heard that they were hiring a group of midgets to play with the kids*. My birthdays have never been that luxuriant. I mean, there’s only so many ways you can drink a bottle of scotch by yourself.
When I turned 19 I was in college, living in the dorms, and my parents had the cafeteria make me a birthday cake, which was very sweet of them. I picked up my cake and I was walking back to my dorm when this girl, who I didn’t know but recognized because she lived near me, looked at me and kind of smiled. I admit I also kind of had a crush on her. At the time I also thought for sure she was waving at me, but in retrospect she was probably just running her hand through her hair.
Anyway, because I was looking at her and still trying to look cool even though I was carrying a birthday cake from my parents, I didn’t see the steps going up to my dorm and I tripped, crushing my birthday cake between myself and the concrete. Besides the cake, my fall was also broken by both of my shins, which connected directly with the corner of one of the steps. It hurt pretty bad. I think I cried a little.
She asked me if I was ok, and I said I was, even though I couldn’t stand because my legs hurt so bad. Then she walked away, and I went to my crummy little dorm room and ate my smashed cake with my bare hands right out of the box.
When I turned 21, two years later, I went to a dive bar with a friend of mine. The only people in the bar were three regulars, each drowning themselves in a mug of Blatz. The bartender was an old, mummified woman less than five feet tall. She looked like she must have been over 150 years old.
“Today’s my birthday,” I told her when she came over to me, but she didn’t ask me what I wanted or for an ID or anything; she just stood there and blew smoke off her cigarette into my face.
“So?” Her voice was deep and scary, even for a mummy, which she was. She’d clearly been breathing through a cigarette filter for the past 65 years. I’m sure by now she’s smoking a cigarette out of a hole in her throat. I thought about turning around and leaving.
“So, can I get a shot or something?” I asked, and just to make sure there was no confusion, I added, “For free?”
She took another drag on her cigarette and looked at me for a little bit. She was one of those cigarette smokers who holds their cigarette deep at the base of their fingers, close to the palm. That way you can still do things, like eat a sandwich or use a wrench, without putting down your cigarette.
“I’ll make you something,” she told me, and turned around and started mixing together random liquors from the shelf behind her. She put a murky, brown liquid in a shot class in front of me. It looked kind of gross.
“Happy birthday,” she said, and then walked over to the other side of the bar. COPS was on TV.
It was a pretty bad drink, although I’ve had much worse since then. I think it might have been a shot of the Three Wise Men**, or possibly the Four Horsemen***.
When I turned 23, two years after that, I hopped on a bus and took a tour of the death camps at
In a month, I will be….25 out of 100,000.
*Tycho Brahe, an astronomer from the 1500s, supposedly kept a midget as pet and would take him on walks with a leash. He also got in a knife fight (in the dark) with another mathematician about their theorems, which resulted in Brahe losing his nose.
**Jack Daniels, Jim Beam, and Johnny Walker.
***Jack Daniels, Jim Beam, Johnny Walker, and Jose Cuervo.
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